HHS boys close in on triple crown with NSC relays title

It's been many years since the Homestead boys track team has claimed a North Shore triple crown.

But now that opportunity is again firmly within the Highlanders grasp, as evidenced by their dominant effort in winning the North Shore Relays at Grafton Wednesday night.

"It's been awhile," said a happy Homestead coach Dan Benson, "but we're just going to keep it one meet a time. However, anytime you meet as a conference you want to do as well as possible and this is a real credit to the guys."

The Highlanders scored 119 points to overpower Germantown (87) and Port Washington (65). The win is also the third victory in the last four North Shore meets (indoor, relays and outdoor) for the team.

And they did it with depth coupled with individual firepower, as they set two meet records and won seven events all told.

The sprint medley (200 meters, 100, 100 and 400) team of Mike Collins, Ian Thompson, Darius Feaster and Gabe Genovesi set one mark with a clocking of one minute, 34.4 seconds, and then the 3,200 unit of Andy Holtorf, Doug Mueller, Clint Lebesch and Genovesi grabbed another (8:16.3).

"This felt good," Genovesi said. "We're really starting to come together as a team and do what we expect to do."

Homestead was dominant in field events, as Justin Barber paced the discus (401-3) and the shot put (133-11 1/2) teams to victory. He was joined in the shot by Kyle Schober and Max Vielmetti and on the discus by Schober and Teiko Amuzu.

Danny Schiller led the high jump crew of Chris Choren and Lawrence Howard to a win (17-5) while other victories went to the long jump team of Taylor Ruffin, Zach Enea and Brad Pelisek (59- 1/2) and the triple jump trio of Feaster, Casey Barnes and Brian Hoffmann (120- 1/2).

"This turned out OK," Benson said. "As you know, the relay meet lends itself to avoiding mishaps as much as possible. By and large, this was a really clean meet for us and we were able to compare ourselves well individually to other teams in the conference."

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